ifera cones, which
Pete said was the squirrel's dining room. This mound contained at least
four good cart-loads of fragments and all of it was the work of the
impudent little blunt-nosed red squirrels, which were plentiful in the
woods.

How long it took these small rodents to heap such a mass of material
together I was unable to calculate, but the mound was as large as some
of the shell heaps made by the ancient oyster-eating men and left by
them along our coast from Florida to Maine.

The numerous magpies seemed to be conscious of my admiration of their
beautiful piebald plumage and to take every opportunity to show off its
iridescent hues to the best advantage in the sunlight.

Pete evidently thought I was a chap of very low taste, with a great lack
of discrimination in the choice of my friends among the forest folk, and
he could see no reason for my intimacy with "all th' outlaws and most
rascally varmints of the park."

Truth compels me to admit that the pranks of some of my little friends
were often mischievous and annoying, but they were also humorous and
entertaining and I laughed when the "tallow-head" jay swooped down and
snatched a tid-bit from Pete's plate just as he was about to eat it, and
when the irate trapper threw his plate at the camp robber it was a
charming sight to see a number of birds flutter down to feast upon the
scattered food.

The loud-mouthed, self-asserting fly-catcher in the cottonwood tree
learned to know my whistle, and whenever I attempted to mimic him he
would send back a ringing answer. The charming little lazulii buntings
were tamer than the irritating dirty English sparrows at home.

It was interesting to notice how quickly all our little wild neighbors
learned to know that the sound produced by banging on a tin plate meant
dough-god and other good things at our camp, and as they came rustling
among the grasses or fluttering from bush and trees they showed more
fear of each other than they did of Pete and me.

When the myriads of bright stars would twinkle in the blue black sky or
the great round-faced moon climb over the mountain tops to see what was
doing in the park, the birds and chipmunks were quiet, but then the big
pack-rats, with squirrel-like tails, would troop out from their secret
caves and invade the camp.

In the gray dawn, while sleeping in a tent, I often awakened to hear
something scamper up its steep side and then laughed to see the shadow
of a comical li